The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said it received a total of 118,784 complaints from telecommunications subscribers in two years.
Deputy Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau at NCC, Alhaji Ismail Adedigba, disclosed this in a report detailing consumer protection activities of the commission presented during a consumer awareness campaign in Niger State according to a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Sunday.
Adedigba said out of the number of complaints received by the commission within the period, a total of 92,757 were satisfactorily resolved.
He said, “Between January 2017 and December 2018, the Commission received a total of 118,784 complaints from consumers, of which 92,757, representing 78 per cent of total complaints received during the two years period, were successfully resolved to the satisfaction of telecoms consumers.”
Adedigba said that 5,010 appreciations were received from some consumers who felt satisfied after the commission had successfully resolved their issues for them and, therefore, decided to formally write and call the commission to express their gratitude for the commission’s interventionist efforts.
He explained that the complaints and appreciations were received through the commission’s various channels of lodging complaints and interactive engagement platforms.
These, he said, include the NCC toll-free Line – 622, which is the commission’s contact centre, the NCC consumer portal, consumer complaint redress email, written complaints, social media as well as those received at the commission’s various outreach programmes which included Consumer Town Hall Meeting, Consumer Outreach Programme and Telecoms Consumer Parliament.
Through the three consumer outreach programmes usually held by the commission across different states on a rotational basis, Adedigba said more than 31, 202 consumers had been engaged face-to-face and adequately educated on their rights and privileges with respect to the provision of telecoms services within the last two years.
He said during such forums, consumer fact sheets developed by the commission on various service-related, topical issues are also distributed to educate consumers on various issues in the industry.
Adedigba added, “The commission places a lot of importance on consumer-related issues. For this reason, the commission has embarked on various initiatives, aimed at enlightening and protecting the consumers to ensure they get quality services, that they are treated right by the service providers and that they get value for money spent on telecoms services, be it voice or data.
“Also, we ensure that we embark on initiatives aimed at providing wider service options as well as putting more control in the hands of the consumers to determine what they receive, especially in terms of value-added services in line with our ‘PIE’ mandate of protecting, informing and educating the consumers.”
Adedigba added that further to its determination to put more control in the hands of consumers to determine what they received on their mobile lines, the NCC in 2016, created the Do-Not-Disturb 2442 Short Code.
